Negation
by gypsymuse
Summary: Don't. Can't. Won't. Flashfic based on spoilers for the rest of Season 5.
1. Chapter 1

**Negation**

A Bones flashfic by Gypsymuse

This is based on spoilers for the 100th episode and remainder of season 5. Booth POV. It's also my first tentative foray into writing for this fandom, so please be gentle with me.

_I don't._ _I can't._ _I won't._

Those are the words that Booth couldn't drink away, couldn't sleep away, couldn't smile and laugh and pretend away. He hears them still, in her choking pained contralto, her arrogant eloquence shattered on a DC sidewalk after he'd stepped over his own line and broken them both. He wonders how long he'll be replaying that scene in his dreams: her wide stricken eyes, the taste of tears as she kissed him, how she clung to him and told him she loved him and she believed him and it still wasn't enough, she was broken and she was breaking him too and there was nothing either one of them could do about it.

_I don't know how to be with you like this._

_I can't be what you need right now._

_I won't risk losing you._

And he knows better, knows her better and knows _them_ better and knows that for once in her life, Temperance Brennan is absolutely and utterly wrong; and he knows also that all the evidence she has gathered so far in her life has convinced her that she is right, and until sufficient evidence to the contrary can be presented to her, she will not be swayed. She wept in his arms and clung to him and declared her love and kissed him with a drowning desperation, but still it was _don't_ and _can't_ and _won't_ that he took home with him that night, and he remembered something she'd said to him once, another time when her voice was breaking and her eyes were overflowing and he'd wondered how he could've ever thought her cold:

It really was heartcrushing, to think that no one loved you. But to know that someone did and it still didn't change things? That was worse, so much worse, to bear.


	2. Chapter 2

(Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story so far. I appreciate it!)

Part two: Brennan's POV.

* * *

The problem did not lie in her feelings for Booth; she'd had sufficient time to examine them, analyze them, turn them over and over in her mind to see how the edges matched up. Pretending ignorance of emotional matters was a coping strategy that had served well over the years, but she was too fundamentally honest to lie to herself--or to Booth, for that matter--any longer. If she could claim to have any comprehension of the concept of "love," then that term certainly applied to how she felt about her partner. She could accept that.

The problem was Booth himself. Brennan had made a practice of keeping her relationships, if not _superficial_, precisely, at least uncomplicated; if she avoided entanglement from the outset, it made the inevitable disconnection that much easier. Booth didn't do superficial, and already she was more deeply tangled up with him than she'd ever thought to be with anyone. Saying _yes_ to Booth, _yes_ to taking that final irreversible step, meant saying _no_ to other people and things to come, meant saying _maybe_ or _maybe later_ and having to take another person even more deeply into consideration than she already did.

(It occurred to her that she had lied, though unknowingly, to Gordon Wyatt: apparently there _was_ something she wouldn't do for Booth. Not yet, anyway.)

Saying yes to Booth had an air of finality about it. There would be no changies, no takebacks, and while her treacherous heart muscle (or whatever it was producing that crushing hollow ache in the center of her chest) was entirely in favor of plunging right in, her finely-honed brain was winning the day with its more measured approach. Saying _yes_ while there was even the hint of _maybe_ left in her was simply not an option. Stronger than her fear of being hurt was the newly-born fear of hurting him; and she knew, if she knew anything, that if she walked into this unprepared she'd end up doing just that. Better a sting now than a stab later; she knew that, too.

Her mind turned back to the letter she'd gotten the week before, the letter she'd been putting off answering. She thought now she could do so; she only wished it didn't feel so much like running away.


	3. Chapter 3

This is the final installment of _Negation_; the 100th episode airs tomorrow (in the US, that is), and we'll all see where it's going from there. To those who've read, and reviewed, thank you for such a nice welcome to this fandom. I think I'll stick around. :)

* * *

Surprisingly (or not; she _had_ changed quite a bit over the past few years), she was the first to crack. The first milky glimmer of daylight had yet to creep past the drawn blinds before Brennan scrubbed a hand across her burning eyes and snatched her cell up from its position on the coffee table. Quickly, before she could think her way out of it, she typed in her message and hit send:

_are we solid?_

The response she didn't expect before morning--if at all--came almost immediately:

_always._

It was followed by another, which it took her a moment to puzzle out; but when she did, she felt for the first time in hours that things might just be all right after all:

_diner 9 am?_

But she knew, even as she sent off her affirmative, that she'd also be sending another affirmative that morning. A few months over the summer, out of the lab and back in the field doing the things she loved best, the things at which she excelled, would be just what she needed to clear her head. This _thing_ with Booth, if it was real, would still be there waiting when she came home; and Brennan had always found the old adage of distance lending perspective to be very true, and thus likely applicable in this situation. It wasn't as if this had been her one shot, her only chance, _their_ moment now forever lost and gone. Infinity goes in both directions; the earth turns, the sun rises, and life goes on. Booth believed in fate and forever and her. She wasn't entirely certain, but she thought perhaps she was starting to want to believe the same things.

~~END~~


End file.
